“There is nothing accidental about this trajectory.
The Greek (and Irish, and Portuguese, and Italian, and
Spanish) crisis has been useful, as everyone now seems
to be admitting, as an accelerant: having to scrape
a whole cohort of eurozone countries off the floor has
simply made the “need” for financial integration
undeniable. The logical conclusion of an economically
illiterate project has been reached. No more messing
with the will of the people: resentful Germans and rebellious
Greeks will be equally overridden in the name of –
what? An international welfare state in which wealth
is redistributed not just from the hard-working to the
non-working classes of one’s own country, but
from industrious nations to failing ones. The traditional
socialist model of the wealth of the richer being taken
by the state to give to the poorer is being applied
on a continental scale, with the inevitable result that
southern Europe will become a permanent basket case,
dependent indefinitely on “support” –
cheap loans and periodic bail-outs – from the
north. The governments of those dependent countries
will simply be ciphers, as powerless as welfare recipients
are likely to be in any system.”

“The greatest danger in all this is that unfounded
expectations will lead to terrible outcomes. There is
an irrational belief in some parts of the Labour Party
and Left-leaning media that the purging of the Murdoch
press and the red-tops generally will make people stop
wanting lower taxes, worrying about immigration, objecting
to welfare fraud, demanding long sentences for criminals,
and being suspicious of the European Union.”
—
“But every time you read that Britain is "more
free" because Murdoch is in trouble, count the
spoons: let's be absolutely sure precisely whose interests
will be served by any new rules binding the press. Let's
be sure that the "spring" is not a big wintry
con.” [Quoted from telegraph.co.uk]

And back to the real story:

Scan recommended.

“It is worth asking in both the British and
American contexts why people who regard themselves
as believers in free speech and liberal democracy
can be so openly eager to close off—silence,
kill, extinguish—different political views from
their own. This is the question that is at the heart
of the matter and which will remain long after every
News International executive who may possibly be incriminated
in the current scandal has been purged.”
—
“The Left does not want a debate or an open market
in ideas. It wants to extirpate its opponents—to
remove them from the field. It actually seems to believe
that it is justified in snuffing out any possibility
of our arguments reaching the impressionable masses—and
bizarrely, it defends this stance in the name of fairness.”
[Quoted from telegraph.co.uk]

Political control of what is known
as ‘broadcast media’ has led to anti-free
speech laws in both the USA and the UK. The problem that
the Left has long suffered is that nobody wants to read
the tripe that they invariably produce. Thus, left-wing
media ends up subsidised, and any competition is steadily
undermined. Nobody wants to read Pravda or Izvestia.

In France, during elections, every
political party is allowed a poster in every village.
The posters are arranged in random order and must
all be within a certain size. You can always tell the
more rabid Socialist parties in that their posters comprise
long, multi-point manifestos [n°.s 3, 12, 15, 16].

Broadcasting is defined as radio and
television, and in just about every country this is controlled
by government. In Britain and the United States, terms
like ‘impartiality’ and ‘neutrality’
are used when licencing broadcasters. This is interpreted
as any so-called economic discussion must not be analytic
and rational, but must always include socialist fantasy
economics, and any other ‘discussion’ that
impinges on socialist cult dogmas must include representatives
of the cult.

This would be no different than a demand
that any serious ‘debate’ include representatives
of Islam, Scientology, Jehovah’s Witnesses and alien
abductees.

In the United States, with its greater
emphasis on constitution and the rule of law, modern technology
has resulted in ‘talk radio’ and cable television
not being subject to these daft and heavily biased ‘impartiality’
laws. This is because ‘talk radio’ and cable
television are not defined as broadcast media.

This has resulted in the left-wing talk radio
and cable television being overwhelmed by channels that are
unsympathetic to the cult; to the extent that even broadcast
television’s interminable, dull pseudo-impartiality is
now being distanced by Fox News. At the same time, the dedicated
left-wing cable channels cannot grab more than relatively tiny
audiences in a free market.

Hence, there is the continual back-channel
whining and ambition from the left wing seeking a ‘fairness
doctrine’, by which, of course, they mean a return
of the halcyon days of a controlled media where the Left
is given another dose of positive discrimination. Meanwhile, the
British continue to be protected from any dissenting voice.

“Instead, journalism in Britain is a patronage
system – just like politics. It is rare to get
good, timely information through merit (eg by trawling
through public records); instead it's about knowing
the right people, exchanging favours. In America reporters
are not allowed to accept any hospitality. In Britain,
taking people out to lunch is de rigueur. It's where
information is traded. But in this setting, information
comes at a price.”

Rupert Murdoch is just a deliberate
distraction from government corruption.

[Heather Brookes has dual American-British
citizenship. She was instrumental in exposing the MPs’
expenses fraud.]

“...then I think back to the jolt I felt when
I heard that, four years earlier, the Browns had invited
several tabloid editors to the funeral of their daughter,
who tragically died at 10 days old.”
—
“ ...[David Cameron] was still trying to please
his old Murdoch mates by tarring the entire Press with
the News of the World’s toilet brush.”

the screws is mostly a big non-‘story’ - we’re
rid of some sleazy pimples on the ‘culture’

But...
nothing much will change.

The Leftists will get to indulge in
yet another of their boring emotional spasms.

But then what do you want, a controlled
press?

Some of the police will always be corrupt.
They always are. But, in general, they’re a lot
better than the average reptile.

There will always be rabble rousers
in politics only too willing to take advantage of the
less bright elements of the populace, as long as the ignorant
are vaunted and allowed to vote.

The sleazy and nosy wusses who failed
to make friends at schools will express their resentment
by poking into other people’s business, and desperately
try to prove they are ‘better’ by ‘exposing’
that nasty Boris Becker who managed to get into the nikkers
of two girls, while he couldn’t
even get one.

Or the girl who had a face like a slab
who ‘advises’ their prettier sisters how to
disguise themselves with coloured mud. Why, they may even
be pursuaded it would be cool to dye their hair red!

Then there will always be short-arsed
boys who want to dress up and tell the rest of the boys
when they can speak; and strivers from the back streets
who want to ‘be important’, but who then find
they can’t keep their grubby hands out of the till.

So we rather need the keyhole types
to go and ‘expose’ them, probably while fiddling
their own ‘expenses’. And we even need the
uniformed gangs know as plod to make sure none of them
steals/fiddles too much, and some of them will also be
on the take.

“But it is more than a collective moral outburst.
In a sense, Murdoch is a victim of the very cultural
revolution he helped to bring about. We are no longer
a deferential nation and, aided by the information revolution,
we insist on seeing the inner wiring of our institutions
and professions. The bankers were first; then the political
class, with the expenses scandal. Now it is the turn
of the media. It’s not the morals of red-top journalists
that have changed. It’s our collective desire
for absolute transparency, to confront the warts on
the body politic, to see the cloven hoof.”
—
“This is indeed the PM’s greatest test to
date, and one that will run and run. In the great political
game, it is his very soul and personality that are on
trial. Judgment matters, and it is inevitable that Cameron’s
will be questioned. But let me be the one to say it:
integrity and loyalty are important, too. And personally,
I would rather have a Prime Minister who still calls
his friend a friend when the going gets tough, than
a craven leader who throws him to the wolves. In the
ferocious days ahead, true leadership will be shown
by those who can distinguish between morality and mob
rule.”

Often cited as one of the best presidents
of the USA - because he didn’t
do anything!

“The political genius of President Coolidge,
Walter Lippmann pointed out in 1926, was his talent
for effectively doing nothing: "This active inactivity
suits the mood and certain of the needs of the country
admirably. It suits all the business interests which
want to be let alone.... And it suits all those who
have become convinced that government in this country
has become dangerously complicated and top-heavy...."

“Coolidge was both the most negative and remote
of Presidents, and the most accessible. He once explained
to Bernard Baruch why he often sat silently through
interviews: "Well, Baruch, many times I say only
'yes' or 'no' to people. Even that is too much. It winds
them up for twenty minutes more." ” [Quoted
from whitehouse.gov]

Screeching around like a demented
five-year-old as Ed Milipede does is not a sign of a decent
or even sane leader.